


as we stumble on our way

by estamir



Category: Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-10
Updated: 2011-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:57:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estamir/pseuds/estamir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friendships start in unlikely places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as we stumble on our way

**Author's Note:**

> More "I was drunk and whining about the lack of fic" fic.

To be technical, it started before this.

It started when they bailed Takeshi's ass out from a beatdown. It started when he and Yuji realized there was something very wrong with their arrests. It started when the first demon attacked him at the mall. It started when he loaded up his computer and found that email and the strangest download he had ever seen.

It started in dreams, when the three of them met in a corridor that had no end.

But it _started_ here, he thinks, and perhaps it's strange to think that as he's staring at the corpse on the ground waiting for reality to hit him like a sack of bricks. His mother is dead, the thing he spoke to hardly five minutes before nothing but a demon wearing her skin.

Nothing is ever going to be the same.

They both try to comfort him, in their own ways: Yuji's words well-intentioned but ultimately meaningless, and Takeshi trying to give him space—but is it really space, or is he just being ignored? Kazuya doesn't know. He doesn't think either of them is really giving him what he needs right now.

But the important thing is that they're trying, and suddenly it feels as if the word "friend" has taken on a completely different level of meaning. He's had friends, of course. But there's something different about guys you play basketball with after school and guys who try to help you hold it together while you stand there and realize that your family is _dead_ and—

—he doesn't know how they're going to keep going from here.

But they do, somehow, and he keeps them going. He finds the right things to say to both of them, he snaps at Takeshi to shut the hell up when he's pushing a bit too hard, and politely asks Yuji to stop being a prat when he's the one stepping out of line. He finds the balance between them, he evens things out, he scolds them and cajoles them and does what he has to, speaks to each of them in their own language and somehow, as they keep moving on, he holds things together.

He doesn't know where they're going. He doesn't know how they'll get there.

But he can keep them all together, for now.

And for now, that's good enough.


End file.
